It’s not that Regina Givens was a bad hair stylist. It’s just that she apparently was even better at making the salon patrons laugh.

“So one day i decided to take it out of the salon and take it to the stage and do an open mic,” Givens said.

That was nine years ago “and I’ve been doing comedy since,” she said.

Seems this late-blooming thing has worked for the 45-year-old from Sacramento. Givens does her stand-up three or four nights a week, including Friday with an 8 p.m. show at Theatre DeVille in Vacaville that includes Jeen Yee, Mario “The Butcher” Montes, Anderi Bailey, and host Tony Sparks.

Givens figured it takes nine or 10 years to become a known entity, so “I’m barely right there,” she said. “It takes that long to get your name to stick. I just keep working at it. You can’t take breaks in the comedy game. If you take a break and go back in, you have to start over.”

Fortunately, Givens said, “I’m getting more exposure the last two years.”

While the stage experience — and tips from other comics like Sacramento’s Mike E. Winfield — helped Givens with timing, she definitely realized the potential from her salon customers early on.

“Other stylists and clients would wait for me to come in. They wanted to hear about my weekend,” Givens said. “I would talk about bits of my life and everybody would respond laughing.”

More of a storyteller than one-line artist, Givens impressed promoter Craig Neely enough to land a spot in Friday night’s Vacaville show.

Neely first caught Givens’ act two years ago in San Francisco and “I loved her true-to-life comedy,” he said, appreciating the comic’s “real to-the-edge humor.”

Neely believes there’s a one-woman show in Givens’ future and the comedienne agreed.

“I’m trying for two years,” she said. “I need a one-hour special.”

Though “wishing I would have started earlier” toward a comedy career, Givens had two kids 11 years apart and needed to focus on them.

Besides, “I didn’t realize I was going to be doing comedy,” she said, so when it happened at 45 “I assumed it was the right time.”

It seemed natural to be on stage performing, she said.

“When I started, it was easy. But I needed structure,” Givens said.

In a business that remains predominantly male, Givens said she’s learned which promoters and booking people to avoid, especially ones that either have a hard time thinking women can be funny or ones that refuse to book more than one woman on the same bill.

“I just stay away from the negative promoters,” she said. “I work with people that work with all genres. You’re always going to have a group of people who don’t have women on the show. I want to work with people of all nationalities, all races in clubs that want to book me for my comedy and not because I’m a woman.”

Givens said 90 percent of the male comics respect her.

“It has gotten better,” she said.

Early in her comedy career, Givens said she listened to too many who tried to dictate her act and style. No more.

“I had lost myself,” she said. “I didn’t know who I was. I had to go back to my storytelling. It’s what I know. I took the time to really know who I was.”

Few, if any, subjects or life experiences are off-limits, Givens said.

“There’s pretty much nothing from my life I don’t turn into humor,” she said.

Givens isn’t without inspiration, mostly from female comics but also men. Count “Blackish” star Tiffany Haddish, Melanie Comarcho, and Sommore among women Givens looks up to and Kevin Hart, Earthquake, Winfield, and Katt Williams among the men.